Transit of Venus Special Event, 5/6 June 2012:
For the 7th time in Human history and last time this century, Venus will pass in front of the sun on 6 June 2012. We are encouraging hams to join up with astronomers and observers in public places to share in this event. It is observable worldwide except the center of the Atlantic (eastern S.America and western Africa) Everywhere else can see parts of it. It lasts 5+ hours and is fully visible around the Pacific Rim. In the Usa it is late afternoon on the 5th towards sunset.
All previous centuries were before the discovery of radio and so sailing ships were dispatched around the globe to time the event. From these times, the size of the Solar System could be calculated. It took months if not years to get the data back. Now we can do it in 0.05 seconds with Ham radio.
See if you can contact hams at other Transit of Venus sites from your public observing site. Here are the suggested calling frequencies. We don't want contest-style pileups nor home stations. We just want a place where similar public setups can contact like minded other public viewing sites via ham radio and make their reports.
See the web page: http://aprs.org/VenusTransit2012.html
We are suggesting these calling frequencies:
40 Meters - 7180 KHz
20 Meters - 14240 KHz
17 Meters - 18140 KHz
15 Meters - 21240 KHz
12 Meters - 24940 KHz
10 Meters - 28340 KHz
VHF - Join the global APRS message reflector "CQ VENUS" to exchange live APRS messages with all other participants. To do this, send APRS msg to CQSRVR with the first words of your message CQ VENUS ... and your text. You can send up to one messae each 30 minutes. For details, see the web page.
*** TAKE ALL IMPORTANT SAFETY PRECAUTIONS WHEN VIEWING THE SUN!!! *** Google for Techniques.
Bob Bruninga, WB4APR (will be observing in Japan with a Japanese callsign JH1IBN-7 from Kyoto.